


Hunting By The Rivers

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, M/M, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens after Dean walks away. (a 9.10 coda)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunting By The Rivers

  
Castiel watches Dean go in silence. There is a burning in his chest, a hollow cavern broiling with an unnameable fear, but he does not reach into it. He can't. There is no time now, with Dean gone and his brother to heal, to care for. The tail lights of Dean's car fade into the haze of rain and darkness, and Castiel thinks, for an absurd second, that a little bit of warmth leaves him, no longer basked in its red, electric glow.

He doesn't feel cold anymore, not like he used to, mere days ago, but he still knows the sensation of absence. Hell is absence, for instance. Absence of the body, of relief. Absence that aches at the core of you until you split apart, and Hell's miasma has space to seep in. Dean perhaps knows this better than him, but Castiel has seen it too, has felt it, when he descended not once but twice into the Pit for the sake of a Winchester. It's not fire he remembers, licking at his wings, but cold, constricting down to the centre of his grace, coiling its way through his bright being until he felt dulled, empty. Until his mind was screaming at him to turn back, fly up, turn back. 

He didn't though, and what a miracle that was, to behold the sight of Dean Winchester for the first time and feel that empty space fill back up. It saved him to save Dean, that day, Castiel thinks. It saved him and he never was the same again.

And so he aches to go after Dean now, too, but he doesn't.

He stands sombre and still by Sam's side as his friend collects himself. Dean _will_ be back, he has to believe it, and perhaps the best thing then that Cas can do for him now is keep his little brother safe. Castiel turns to Sam, who's eyes are red-rimmed and weighted.

"Do you want me to drive?" he asks, by way of asking if Sam would like to go. Really, he should force the issue, as staying out in the wet and cold is not going to do Sam's health any favours, but he also knows there is a different kind of healing that needs to happen, too. Castiel will let Sam have his space and silence as long as he needs.

Sam lets out a shaky, tired breath. "Um, no, no," he says, wiping a hand down his face as he collects himself, and straightens his hunched shoulders. "I think I'm good enough."

Castiel simply nods in approval, and follows Sam back to his stolen car. 

The rain continues to patter on the boardwalk.

  
***

  
" _Sam is even better today_ ," Castiel writes on his phone the next morning, and before he can think too much about it, hits 'send'. He stares at the pixelated letters that form the word _'Dean'_ in his phone's contact list until the harsh light of his phone's display make his eyes sting.

Or, maybe it's not the word or the screen, maybe it's the absence it _represents_. This is the only way he can talk to Dean now, of course, when Dean's not actually here.

He receives no reply.

  
***

  
The next day, Castiel tries again.

" _I tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time since I found my mojo again. It was not the same as I remembered,_ " he tries for a bit of levity instead, hoping food is an appropriate enough topic conversation. Dean does not reply today either, but Castiel likes to think that despite his silence, he is still somewhere, listening. He tells himself not to worry, and spends that night, while Sam gets a much needed, long sleep, in the library.

He hasn't touched Dean's room in his absence, feeling like too much of an intruder without Dean there, too. So Castiel spends his late hours reading in the large armchair where Kevin might have sat once, in his own long hours of unrest.

He picks out a book about djinn and wonders what tonight Dean is dreaming about, and winces. Out of all the things about being human Castiel might miss, dreams are not one of them. It's worse to be reminded of one's regrets in the dark.

  
***

  
This goes on for days, this odd pattern of texting and waiting. In between attempts to coax Dean into talking to him, Castiel looks after Sam.

His friend doesn't need a "babysitter," as he snaps at Cas in one of his lowest moments since the schism, and so Castiel does not take it personally when he's asked not to hover. Dean was always like this, too, when Castiel would tend to his wounds.

Although with Sam, it's only the same to a point. Sam's breath doesn't hitch when Castiel glides his glowing, grace-lit hand over his skin, because Cas does not touch him. Skin to skin contact never enhanced the healing power of his grace when he used to grasp Dean, it just enhanced the sense of something else, something unspoken and scary and _true_. Dean would tell Castiel not to hover as usual, but he would always lean into his touch, in those stolen moments masquerading as first aid.

Castiel would lean in, too.

Instead, Sam and him bond in a different manner. They do extensive, exhaustive research about Gadreel and his history, and discover things in the Men of Letter's tomes and texts even things Castiel did not know. Sam is still not ready to touch Kevin's research, which lies still strewn on the table, where their young friend had left it. Sometimes, Castiel sees Sam's eyes stray to it, when they're working, but only before he snatches his hovering hand back with a frustrated gasp, and presses a thumb into the palm of his hand to ground himself, Castiel supposes. He sees Sam do this often.

Castiel's anchor, however, remains somewhere out there in the wilderness still, hiding in the shadows where he thinks he should belong. Castiel wants to yell at him and say he _doesn't_ , wants to grips his shoulders and shake him and say, _please believe me when I say I believe in you_.

His own hands ache in their own way, then, as well.

  
***

  
After 6 long days the stalemate is finally broken. 

Castiel is in Dean's room when he gets the text, already breaking his own self-imposed rule. He couldn't resist when he saw the door ajar, probably left open by Sam, feeling a similar, impulsive melancholy. He sits on Dean's bed and lets himself wonder, only for a brief second, what it would have been like to sleep on this mattress, when he still needed sleep. He thinks it would have been very comfortable, but the thinks the warm presence of Dean beside him would have been even more so.

The annoying, beeping alert of his phone shakes him out of this dangerous train of thought, however. He digs his phone out of his pocket and squints down at the screen with a frown. He did not expect to see Dean's name there at all.

" _Will u hear me now if i pray to u?_ " reads the text, and Castiel reads it in Dean's gruff, rich voice in his mind, full of rich memories of that melodious tenor.

Castiel indulgences himself in a small smile while he writes back, a sort and simple " _Yes_ ," and waits anxiously to hear Dean's voice for real in the chamber of his head.

"I'm sorry, I--" Dean begins, voice sounding shaky and strained as it resounds through Castiel. "I'm sorry I haven't, you know, called at all," he says.

Castiel opens his mouth, about to say "It doesn't matter," but catches himself before he does. He sighs in frustration that prayer is such a one-way street, so to speak. He wishes Dean would just _call him_ , on the phone, like normal people do.

Then again, they have never been normal people.

Instead, he writes it out on his phone, hoping Dean will read it. Evidently he does.

"Nah, it was shitty of me," Dean says, and Castiel imagines he is shaking his head at himself, alone in some motel room. "Which is hardly surprising, knowing me, but--well."

" _You needed space,_ " Castiel texts, desperate to tamper down Dean's unforgiving line of thinking. Castiel has made more mistakes in his millenia of existence than Dean will ever have the chance to, and it truly hurts him to see his friend suffer like this.

"No, you guys needed space from _me_. I'm--I'm not good luck, Cas," Dean prays, and his voice cracks again.

" _I once told you the same thing, I believe,_ " Castiel writes back. Maybe this is better anyway, this awkward talking and texting. Unless he deletes them, Dean will have Castiel's words that he desperately needs to hear forever.

" _And you said that you'd rather have me, cursed or not. It's the same for me, when it comes to you_."

"So now we're a couple of _cursed_ dumb asses, is that what you're saying?" Dean laughs out a small breathy laugh. Castiel counts it as a victory.

" _I prefer... trusting,_ " Castiel repeats his line from days before. " _I trust you._ " Castiel knows this hasn't always been true, and those memories will always be a black burden Castiel will have to bear, but in this moment, it _is_.

"You really shouldn't."

" _But yet, I do."_

  
***

  
"Gadreel is dead," Dean finally says again, after a moment. His tone is flat as it echoes in Castiel's head. He waits for Dean to continue before he makes a comment or reply, but Dean doesn't.

" _Are you coming back?_ " he asks, the question his been yearning to pose since the beginning of this whole overdue conversation.

"I--I shouldn't," Dean says, sounding sad and resigned.

Castiel thinks simply typing out " _you should_ " might come off as a bit too belligerent at a time like this, and so instead he writes, " _I could always come to you_."

Dean huffs. "That's an even _worse_ idea. 'Sides, Sam'll be better company than I ever was."

" _That's not true. Your brother is excellent company, but you are not substitutes for the other. You are irreplaceable._ "

Dean laughs, but it is without mirth, instead tinged with a sour, bitter sound that rings dissonant in Castiel's metaphorical ear. "Too much of a fuck up to copy, huh?"

" _No_ ," Castiel types back immediately, pounding the keys of his phone harder than is likely necessary.

He casts a desperate glance around Dean's untouched room, looking for the right words to convey what he wants to say. _No, too beautiful?_ No, even that is not enough.

He spots a picture of Dean and his mother on the desk beside him, taken when Dean must have been very young. The photograph is old and worn, but is not ripped in any place, despite being carried in bags and pockets over years and miles of searching and unsettlement. Its careful preservation and revered position in the middle of a room of Dean's own is a testament to how much he still loves her, his mother. And despite never having a mother of his own, a vicarious affection blooms in Castiel's chest.

" _No, your heart is too complex to match,_ " he writes, heart and lungs swelled up with something other than blood and air--finally, there's _purpose_. " _No one loves quite the same as you and there's no one I love quite as much._ "

A beat, a choked back sob. Castiel wonders if earlier Dean had been crying. "Cas-- _fuck,_ man, you can't--I don't know what... Really?"

" _Come home, Dean,_ " Castiel writes.

  
***

  
Dean does.


End file.
